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Trump’s Fake News Awards

Stephen Colbert refers to them as the Fakies. He was hoping his comedy show would win one of these awards.

Fact checkers have been working overtime, as the White House produces one false statement after another. It is wonderful to have politifact.com, factcheck.org and other fact checking websites, drill down on the many statements made by politicians. Trump now has a historical low rating of 4% true and 12% mostly true statements, so 84% of his statements are Mostly False, False, or Pants on Fire according to Politifact.

The media is not 100% accurate. Mistakes are made. What really differentiates a mistake from a lie, is whether the news organization corrects itself, in a timely and public manner. The awards were given out for 9 mistakes which were quickly corrected. Even Paul Kruger’s opinion on the future of the economy was rescinded a couple of days later when he changed his mind. No facts were in dispute, so it is hardly reason for a fake news award.

The White House does push back, as it should, when incorrect information is released. For example, the tweet from Times reporter Zeke Miller stated that a bust of Martin Luther King was no longer in the Oval Office, was corrected within an hour. A picture of the statue was tweeted the same day by the White House. Another pretty silly mistake was made by Dave Weigel who posted a picture of a Pensacola rally, showing the room to be only partially filled, however the picture was taken before the rally began. Weigel works for the Washington Post, but this tweet came from his personal account, and was never published in the Washington Post. But, it qualified for a fakie award – go figure!

Then there is the silly fish food dumping incident. CNN broadcast a clip showing Trump shamelessly dumping an entire box of food for the ritual feeding of Koi fish during his visit in Japan. It was Politifact, which caught the error, after examining the entire video, which shows Trump was only following the lead of the Japanese Prime Minister. The video clip went viral, but so did a host of retractions very soon afterwards with a clip of the Prime Minister also doing the same thing – dumping the entire small box. This clearly demonstrated that Politifact will back the president when the reporting is unfair as occurred in this case. Koigate and the subsequent retraction all occurred on Nov 6, 2017 with the initial mistake occurring two minutes after midnight from a tweet by a CNN reporter, Veronica Rocha. Glad to see she survived Koigate and is still tweeting (up to 9600 tweets!) for CNN.

I particularly enjoy Gizmodo’s comment, “In the wide world of media mistakes, Koigate is probably somewhere between a spelling error and posting the wrong hyperlink. But you can be sure that we’ll be talking about Koigate for some time as an example of what’s wrong with the media.” It does qualify as a mistake because they quickly admitted the error. If Koigate can qualify as one of the top ten mistakes made by CNN in 2017, then you really have to give CNN credit for some pretty accurate reporting.

What the awards actually show, is the mainstream media is very concern about accuracy, and has no problem admitting their occasional mistakes. In fact, when CNN really screwed up by incorrectly stating Antony Scaramucci, had links to a Russian investment fund supposedly being investigated by the United States Senate. CNN quickly issued a retraction and forced the resignation of three reporters. CNN suspended Brian Ross for four weeks, without pay, after the Scaramucci mistake.

CNN also reported that according to their sources, Comey’s testimony would contradict Trump’s on the critical issue of whether he was under investigation. He did not contradict Trump’s statements on this issue, and CNN reported their original expectation was wrong. Their sources were wrong on what Comey was going to say. So what? Stock analysts make hundreds of wrong predictions every day.

The last Fake Award (#11) is really just a Trump’s attack on the Russian investigation in general. It reads as follows:

And last, but not least: “RUSSIA COLLUSION!” Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!

The GOP.com website, adds this tweet by Donald Trump:

Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad!

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, appointed by the Trump administration, continues his investigation, as do congressional committees led by Republicans.

The fakies awards missed their target 11 to 0. In fact, if that is the best the White House has, CNN and the others should feel pretty good. (“hit me with your best shot, fire away”, Pat Benetar, still a classic). On petty, silly and absolutely non consequential mistakes, I still find Koigate as # 1, followed quickly by the Martin Luther King bust as # 2, and the Polish first lady non-handshake mistake (see link from GOP.com) as # 3 and the Pensacola half empty stadium as #4. See links.